8 Great ... Foreign Flicks You Should See Before the U.S. Remakes

The Force didn’t boil over only from the far reaches of George Lucas’ imagination. Before Luke, Han, and R2D2, there was Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress. Lucas’ film wasn’t exactly a remake, but it was a powerful influence. One can only imagine how the battle between Luke and Darth Vader would have turned out if Kurosawa hadn’t used two low-level characters to outline the story of a General and Princess on a quest to return home with gold and rebuild their clan. The links between the two films have inspired fan comparisons ranging from general plot similarities and the use of frame wipes to intriguing scene-by-scene comparisons.

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